Tuesday 6 December 2022

itsenรคisyyspรคivรค (10. 364)

Celebrated as a national holiday, on this day in 1917 the Finnish Declaration of Independence was adopted by the country’s parliament (eduskunta), simultaneously severing its autonomy within Imperial Russia as a Grand Principality and forming a independent republic, prompted the Bolshevik Revolution, in turn caused by hardships experienced during World War I, and the subsequent abdication of Czar Nicholas II, who held the title of Grand Prince, which nullified the personal union between the two territories. Russian revolutionaries acknowledging a general right to self-determination—including the right of secession ”for the peoples of Russia”—the People’s Commissars, members including Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, approved of Finland’s decision and recognised its status by late December and establishing diplomatic relations by January 1918.

Saturday 26 November 2022

li’l folks (10. 338)

Born this day in 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Charles Monroe “Sparky” Schultz, cartoonist and creator of the characters who would become the Peanuts comic strip (his uncle gave him the nickname after the horse Spark Plug in a daily comic called Take Barney Google F’rinstance) is regarded as a universal influence, informing and defining the modern medium as a legitimate means of psychological and sociological exploration and commentary.

Monday 14 November 2022

rock inky (10. 302)

Founded in March of the same year (first weekly pictured) and delightfully referred to as the titular class of publications, the circular, the New Musical Express (NME) first started its singles chart on this day’s edition in 1952, the first British newspaper to do so, following the model of the US magazine Billboard. Listing the top twelve, the first number one hit was Al Martino’s “Here in My Heart,” which held the top spot for nine consecutive weeks—a record not broken until Bryan Adam’s ballad for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991. Associated with gonzo journalism particularly during the mid-1970s and its coverage of the rise of the punk genre, the label went on to report on film, television, gaming and pop culture before folding its print enterprise in 2018 and becoming an online magazine.

Sunday 13 November 2022

je suis en terrasse (10. 300)

Already on heightened alert after a series of attacks following the Charlie Hebdo office and Jewish grocery market shootings at the beginning of the year and vigilant ahead of the UN Climate Change, COP21, Conference scheduled to be held in the city next month, the coordinated radical Islamist terrorist operation, les Attentats du 13-Novembre, transpiring this night in 2015 were six separate bombings and indiscriminate shootings across Paris and its suburbs undertaken by three groups. Three suicide bombers struck a stadium hosting an international football match. Another group took hostages and opened fire into the audience of a large concert venue with simultaneously more gunmen attacking crowded cafรฉs and restaurants on the boulevards of the city. In all, 130 people were killed, most victims from the music venue, and the violence rattled Europe and sparked a backlash against refugees and migration in general as France was put under an รฉtat d’urgence, state of emergency, though locally there was a spirit of resilience and defiance with curb side dining reopening under the title slogan.

9x9 (10. 299)

enแธซeduana: the fourth incarnation of the four-thousand year old Mesopotamian priestess who is the world’s first named author 

rip: founding member of the Clash and Public Image Ltd Keith Levene passes away, aged 65—via Nag on the Lake  

this is jim rockford. at the tone, leave your name and message. i’ll get back to you. [beep]: the mid-1970s detective drama intro faithfully recreated in LEGO  

spitalfields life: Peta Bridle illustrates her tour of London with her daughter 

tic-toc—let’s talk: Watch Dog and a nightmare clown teach children to read an analogue clock  

hush city: interactive mapping applications to chart out one’s urban soundscape and mark out those quiet spots  

51/49: Democrats retain control of the US Senate with a win in Nevada and the run-off election in Georgia ahead  

hawkwind: space music pioneer Nik Turner has died, aged 82  

the civilisation of llhuros: an artist exhibited, convincingly, a mock Iron Age culture with fantasy folkways and artefacts—via the New Shelton Wet / Dry

Friday 11 November 2022

and so it goes (10. 294)

As our faithful chronicler informs noted author, humanist, peace activist, World War II veteran—captured during the Battle of the Bulge, interned in Dresden and survived the Allied fire bombing of the city, recounting the experience in Slaughterhouse-Five—and possible alien Kurt Vonnegut, Junior would have turned 100 today. From the introduction to his 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, “So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.  When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.  It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.  So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.”

menas of egypt (10. 293)

Early third century wonder-worker and Coptic soldier in the Roman army martyred for refusing to recant his Christian faith, Menas (โฒ€โฒƒโฒƒโฒ โฒ˜โฒโฒ›โฒ—Amen), is commemorated on this day, corresponding to 15 Hathor on the Egyptian calendar. Garnering a posthumous reputation for intercession on any number on ailments, Abu Mina, the site where his body was buried (according to legend, the camels bearing his corpse stopped twice in this exact location and refused to move further) after being dismembered by fellow soldiers became a popular pilgrimage—following Constantine I (previously) sending his ill daughter, Flavia Valeria Constantina—later known as Saint Constance, destination with terracotta flasks with the saint’s iconography taken as souvenirs and found from Heidelberg to Cheshire and all points in between. Protector of the falsely accused, peddlers and travelling salespersons, Menas is the patron of the city of Heraklion, Koblenz and many Swiss villages in the north Alps.

Monday 7 November 2022

ะดะฒะฐ ะฒะธั…ั–ะดะฝั– ะดะฝั– (10. 280)

Not the usual variety of holiday-creep but rather in response to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church’s propaganising and open support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and acquiescing to an already emergent move to more Western traditions that have been present among the populace particularly since 2014—even declaring the Gregorian date a public holiday in 2017 but with appeals stretching back as far as shortly after the 1582 change instigated by Pope Gregory was adopted by neighbouring Poland for civil and religious purposes , the ecclesiastical body, the independent Kyiv Metropolitanate, announced that each parish could hold full Christmas service on 25 December if they wished—whereas the day in the Orthodox calendar was only a solemnity for prayers beforehand. Leaders of the country’s some seven thousand churches are polling parishioners to find out how many would like to have Christmas on the Western date or stick with the Julian calendar (7 January)—with most communities and families expected to observe both.

Sunday 6 November 2022

king gustavus adolphus day (10. 278)

Celebrated annually on this day in Sweden (Gustav Adolfsdagen), Finland (Kustaa Aadolfin pรคivรค) and Estonia (Adolfi pรคev), becoming popular first in the nineteenth century some two centuries after the king’s death on the battlefield in Lรผtzen on this day in 1632 (OS 16 November—see previously). Whereas formerly observed with patriotic parades, contemporary traditions primarily consist of pastry-consumption, centred in Gรถteborg (a city founded by his person, styled Gustav II. Adolph) which has sold this confection known locally as Gustav Adolfskaelse since the 1850s and hosts a yearly competition to honour the best version without the royal, bas-relief portrait.

Saturday 5 November 2022

in quintum novembris (10. 272)

Whilst not the mastermind behind the failed regicide and plan to blow up the House of Lords during the opening ceremonies of Parliament on this day in 1605 and restore the Catholic monarchy, Guy Fawkes has become the most well-known of the plotters—having been caught red-handed as it were guarding thirty-six barrels of gunpowder stored in a rented sub-cellar below Westminster, after authorities were tipped off by an anonymous letter sent to the Catholic member William Parker, Baron Monteagle, warning him not to attend and retire himself to the countryside that day. Gruesomely tortured the following day after his capture for the names of his co-conspirators, whom had all fled for Europe, Fawkes, who employed the nom-de-guerre of Guido while fighting as a mercenary for Spain during the Eighty Years War and now preferred to be called John Johnson, became the focus of pubic rage with Londoners encouraged to observe a thanksgiving for the “joyful day of deliverance” when the king escaped assassination by lighting bonfires—provided that “this testemonye of joy be carefull done without any danger or disorder”—and the burning of effigies, or Guys as the ragged strawmen came to be called. This Wanderwort was used in the American colonies but lost its proppish and pejorative and even specifically male sense, and reimported was a general way to refer to people. In contemporary times, other figures are subject to being burned in effigy and Fawkes is reformed and adopted as a figure of activism, anarchy and anonymity.

Friday 4 November 2022

kv62 (10. 270)

On this day in 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and team, sponsored by patron George Herbert, Earl of Carnavon, discovered the first step leading down to the tomb of Tutankhamun, inspired to continue the search after other burial goods were discovered bearing the name of the pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt were found by excavators contracted by Egyptologist Theodore Davis in ancillary chambers before the Great War. Digging proceeded at pace throughout the month, reaching the antechamber and unsealing the vault on 26 November, exceeding all expectations and lending heretofore unknown insight into royal funeral rites. The media frenzy following that gripped the public imagination was known as “Tutmania,” influencing styles and decorative arts as well as informing Egypt’s struggle for independence from Britain by reconnecting it with its past.

Thursday 3 November 2022

as your heart chose—only time (10. 267)

The lead single from New Age singer Enya’s (see previously) fifth studio album A Day Without Rain was released on this day in 2000, the reflective pop ballad surging in popularity nearly a year later when many US and international broadcasters began using the song in their coverage of the aftermath of the 9/11 Terror Attacks. The artist donated proceeds from the single’s sales to the Widows’ and Children’s Fund of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. The music video, remastered in 2020 to celebrate its anniversary, was conceived and directed by multimedia artist Graham Fink, one of the world’s most awarded and versatile creatives.

Monday 31 October 2022

quintinus (10. 259)

Venerated with a feast on the calendar of saints on this day, marking his martyrdom by beheading whilst on his way to trial in Reims, the capital city of Gallia Belgica, for proselytizing Christianity in the late third century, Quentin of Amiens, was charged by the prefect Rictovarus (the province’s vicarious, a deputy, a vicar) whom under the reign of Diocletian (see previously) is cited as a the persecutor of thousands of the faith community—before converting himself and put to death, at least by tradition though that may be a pious fiction, and subjected to torture though refused to relent. Unceremoniously tossed in the Somme, his body was first miraculous discovered by a Roman woman visiting the region on pilgrimage—her sight restored—and then again in the seventh century by Saint Eligius who established a permanent shrine which became the basilica of Saint-Quentin. For no particular reason that I can fathom, Quentin is invoked against sneezes and coughs and dropsy (edema, water retention) and is the patron protector of chaplains, locksmiths (see above), porters, tailors and surgeons.

Saturday 22 October 2022

sine motu curro (10.246)

Artist and designer Pierre Brault has installed a collection of arresting, colourful timepieces on buildings in Paris and other cities as part of his Pop Sundial project (see also), designed to encourage people to look up and contemplate the passing lights and shadows with the classical Latin adages and invocations of history.  See more at designboom at the link above.


 

Wednesday 19 October 2022

friรฐuswฤซรพ (10. 237)

Princess and abbess and credited with founding a priory later incorporated into the College of Christ Church, Frithuswith is fรชted on this day, marking her death in 727, as patron saint of the university, city and shire of Oxford (see also). Daughter of Didan, sub-king of Mercia, Frithuswith was compelled to flee the advances of ร†thebald of Leicester (in order to preserve her vow of celibacy) and was transported to the hamlet of Weald with some divine intervention. With a host of miracles attributed to her, including the remission of maladies and the summoning up an enchanted well, Frithuswith cult grew and following its destruction in the eleventh century during the St Brice’s Day Massacre, the pilgrimage destination weathered the turmoil of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and vandalism during the Reformation mostly intact. Intent on subduing her popularity, a Calvinist canon of the church had her remains disinterred and comingled with those of an recently deceased ex-nun called Catherine Dammartin, the wife of another priest which for the towns people was considered rather scandalous, to put an end to this idolatry of relics. Despite all this, Frithuswith is still embraced by the community and her feast day is also celebrated as Oxfordshire Day to promote local cultural institutions.

Monday 17 October 2022

ฮฌฮณฮนฮฟฯ‚ ฮฌฮฝฮดฯฮญฮฑฯ‚ ฮฟ ฮบฯฮทฯ„ฮนฮบฯŒฯ‚ (10. 231)

Fรชted on this day on the occasion of his martyrdom in the Forum Bovis (the Ox Market where public executions were held) of Constantinople by order of Constantine V in 766 or 767, the fervent iconodule Andrew of Crete (AOC, not to be confused with more prominent theologian and hymnographer from a few decades earlier with the same name) was a champion of religious imagery when such practises were suppressed as idolatrous by imperial authorities in the Eastern Empire during the Byzantine Iconoclasm. A monastery as was dedicated in his memory (originally named for the apostle and later after the ultimate triumph of Orthodoxy adding the appellation ฮฎ ฮšฯฮฏฯƒฮนฯ‚—by-the-Judgement, Krisis—for this popular opposition figure sentenced to death for his iconophilia) and currently houses the Koca Mustafa Pasha mosque.

Friday 14 October 2022

whistle-stop tour (10. 222)

On this day in 1872, a century and a half ago, the first rail-route—between Shinbashi and Yokohama—went into service, and to mark this occasion and everything that trains represent in terms of very freighted culture and technology the Tokyo Station Gallery has collected and curated artwork and ephemera from around Japan from your consideration.

Tuesday 11 October 2022

it gets better (10. 213)

In recognition of Coming Out Day (see previously), Wikipedia’s Hauptseite refers us to the interactive browser game made by developer Nicky Case, whose other titles include the Parable of the Polygons and Adventures in Anxiety, in their semi-autobiographical, interactive game Coming Out Simulator 2014—see also. Styled to appear like an instant messaging application, play imparts possible scenarios in conversations about coming out to one’s friends and family—with no right or wrong answers—and to provide a forum for LGBT youth to understand their sexuality and gender identity. Though imperfect from the perspective of the present and focused more on engendering empathy among heterosexuals and characters are presented as cis and binary, this game played a big role in self-acceptance for many young people and the range of answers and angles is purposeful architecture of discomfort to induce stress and cause players to carefully weigh the consequences of their decisions and actions and develop life-skills. An emulator of the simulation is available here.

Friday 7 October 2022

la fin de la fรฉe verte (10. 201)

The production or sale prohibited until the first of March of 2005, as a result of a referendum that took place in 1908, absinthe containing thujone, wormwood was banned in Switzerland on this day in 1910, prompted by a rather sensational murder that made headlines all over Europe and informed and heightened a moral panic associated with the drink. A heavy alcoholic named Jean Lanfray, a labourer who worked at a vineyard in the canton of Vaud, murdered his family in a drunken rage. Though Lanfray drank up to five litres of wine daily and as a lunch time refreshment on the day of the violent killings partook of seven glasses of wine, six cognacs, a brandy coffee, two crรจme de menthes, then two shots of absinthe as a digestif after a sandwich, vintners were hoping to shift the blame squarely on the latter.

Tuesday 27 September 2022

แˆ˜แˆตแ‰€แˆ (10. 172)

Transliterated into Latin script as Ge’ez or Cross, Ethiopian and Eritrean orthodox Tewahedo communities celebrate the fourth century discovery of the True Cross by Helen (previously) on this day, the seventeenth of Meskerem (แˆ˜แˆตแŠจแˆจแˆ), by which the holiday Meskel is known. Festivities includes the burning of a Demera—that is, a large bonfire—after the tradition that Queen Eleni, as she is called locally, was instructed in a dream that the rising smoke would guide her to spot where the relic was buried. Adherents believe that the burning symbolizes the cancellation of sins and the ultimate collapse of the wood pile has prognosticatory value to glean for the near future and like on Ash Wednesday, anoint themselves. Since 2013, Meskel has been inscribed on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.